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    Astronomers find pairs of Black Holes at the centers of Merging Galaxies

    November 10, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    These images reveal the final stage of unions between pairs of galactic nuclei in the messy cores of colliding galaxies. The image at top left, taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, shows the merging galaxy NGC 6240. A close-up of the two brilliant cores of this galactic union is shown at top right. This view, taken in infrared light, pierces the dense cloud of dust and gas encasing the two colliding galaxies and uncovers the active cores. The hefty black holes in these cores are growing quickly as they feast on gas kicked up by the galaxy merger. The black holes' speedy growth occurs during the last 10 million to 20 million years of the merger. Images of four other colliding galaxies, along with close-up views of their coalescing nuclei in the bright cores, are shown beneath the snapshots of NGC 6240. The images of the bright cores were taken in near-infrared light by the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, using adaptive optics to sharpen the view. The reference images (left) of the merging galaxies were taken by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS). The two nuclei in the Hubble and Keck Observatory photos are only about 3,000 light-years apart -- a near-embrace in cosmic terms. If there are pairs of black holes, they will likely merge within the next 10 million years to form a more massive black hole. These observations are part of the largest-ever survey of the cores of nearby galaxies using high-resolution images in near-infrared light taken by the Hubble and Keck observatories. The survey galaxies' average distance is 330 million light-years from Earth. CREDIT NASA, ESA, and M. Koss (Eureka Scientific, Inc.); W. M. Keck Observatory; Panoramic Survey

    These images reveal the final stage of unions between pairs of galactic nuclei in the messy cores of colliding galaxies. The image at top left, taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, shows the merging galaxy NGC 6240. A close-up of the two brilliant cores of this galactic union is shown at top right. This view, taken in infrared light, pierces the dense cloud of dust and gas encasing the two colliding galaxies and uncovers the active cores. The hefty black holes in these cores are growing quickly as they feast on gas kicked up by the galaxy merger. The black holes’ speedy growth occurs during the last 10 million to 20 million years of the merger...

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    Chlamydia attacks with Frankenstein protein

    November 9, 2018, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Chlamydia bacteria (green), use a dual-function enzyme called ChlaDUB1 to build a shell around themselves with pieces of the host cell’s Golgi apparatus (red).
    Credit: Robert Bastidas – Duke University

    The bacterium remodels human cells for its own nefarious purposes. When Chlamydia trachomatis, the bacterium that causes one of the most common sexually transmitted infections worldwide, infects a human cell, it hijacks parts of the host to build protective layers around itself.

    Inside this makeshift fortress, the bug grows and reproduces, eventually bursting out in search of a new target and killing the host cell. While scientists have known for years that Chlamydia protects itself in this way, they were missing the mechanics until now...

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    ‘Bionic Mushrooms’ Fuse Nanotech, Bacteria and Fungi

    November 8, 2018, Categories  Chemistry/Nanotechnology, Biology/Biotechnology, Technology/Electronics, Health/Medical

    This is a white button mushroom equipped with 3D- printed graphene nanoribbons (black), which collect electricity generated by densely packed 3D-printed cyanobacteria (green). Credit: Sudeep Joshi, Stevens Institute of Technology

    This is a white button mushroom equipped with 3D- printed graphene nanoribbons (black), which collect electricity generated by densely packed 3D-printed cyanobacteria (green).
    Credit: Sudeep Joshi, Stevens Institute of Technology

    In their latest feat of engineering, researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology have taken an ordinary white button mushroom from a grocery store and made it bionic, supercharging it with 3D-printed clusters of cyanobacteria that generate electricity and swirls of graphene nanoribbons that can collect the current.

    The work, reported in the Nov...

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    Ultra-Hot Gas around remnants of Sun-like Stars

    November 8, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist’s impression of the hot white dwarf GALEXJ014636.8+323615 (white) and its ultra-hot circumstellar magnetosphere (purple) trapped with the magnetic field (green). Credit: N. Reindl. Click for a larger image

    Artist’s impression of the hot white dwarf GALEXJ014636.8+323615 (white) and its ultra-hot circumstellar magnetosphere (purple) trapped with the magnetic field (green). Credit: N. Reindl. Click for a larger image

    Solving a decades-old mystery, an international team of astronomers have discovered an extremely hot magnetosphere around a white dwarf, a remnant of a star like our Sun. The work was led by Dr Nicole Reindl, Research Fellow of the Royal Commission 1851, based at the University of Leicester, and is published today (7 November) in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

    White dwarfs are the final stage in the lives of stars like our Sun...

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